• ALGAE
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.205-217
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• 2016

Freshwater red tides due to dinoflagellates have caused spectacular and regular “summer reddening” in recent years in Baishihai Lake, a temperate, meromictic, meso- or oligotrophic, high-altitude, landslide-dammed, deep lake located at the eastern edge of Tibetan Plateau in China. Based on morphological and molecular analyses, the causative organism has been identified as a new woloszynskioid dinoflagellate, Tovellia diexiensis Q. Zhang et G. X. Liu sp. nov. The vegetative cells are 20-32 μm long and 16-24 μm wide. They have a hemispherical episome and a broadly rounded hyposome with a short characteristic antapical spine. Usually cells are bright red due to the presence of numerous red-pigmented bodies, which often masked the yellowish green discoid chloroplasts. The amphiesma of motile cells comprise mainly quadrilateral, pentagonal or hexagonal thin plates, arranged in 4-5 latitudinal series on the episome, 1 in the cingulum and 4 on the hyposome. Molecular phylogenies based on small subunit ribosomal DNA and large subunit ribosomal DNA (LSU) indicate T. diexiensis from Baishihai Lake to belong to the family Tovelliaceae, which was monophyletic in our LSU phylogenies. During the bloom-forming period in 2005, cell density of T. diexiensis reached 9.15 × 10⁵ cells L⁻¹. Astaxanthin and its diester were found to be the major pigments in T. diexiensis, resulting in a characteristic blood-red color of the water in Baishihai Lake.